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Medusa Gorgon
Medusa Gorgon is the first main antagonist featured in Soul Eater. She is the mother of Crona, who is also the crown jewel in her master plan: the destruction of the current world order to get the planet back on track. She is the middle child of the three Gorgon Sisters. Lacking empathy for others, along with a twisted sense of love for those who are like her in personality, Medusa views everyone as a potential specimen to experiment on or as a tool to suit her purpose. She is voiced by Houko Kuwashima in the Japanese version of the anime, Luci Christian in the English version and Laura Lenghi in the Italian version. Appearance Medusa is a woman with a fairly average physical build, and a large, black, dotted snake tattoo winding down either arm. Her facial features consist of eyes containing yellow irises with black pupils, and blonde hair arranged in a spiked style, with two long strands extending downwards framing either side of her face, that entwine each other like a caduceus' snake to rest upon her chest. She wears a black body-length suit with hood, which extends downwards to her knees. The hood itself is adorned with an eye-like marking upon either side which, interestingly, when worn in addition to the shape of her hair, gives it the appearance of a snake's mouth, with teeth and fangs. Medusa also has a tail which is shaped like an arrow. It is notable that she is a barefooter - never wearing shoes, when not in disguise, with unique toenail and fingernail polish that is black featuring yellow arrows pointing upwards. Personality Medusa is an incredibly sinister and evil individual, as well as a very powerful witch. Her greatest skill is her ability to manipulate almost anyone, due to her unbelievably high skills in acting. In her true personality, Medusa has a view of the entire world as a place of stasis, where nothing evolves or changes. She hates this so much that she went to the extent of resurrecting Kishin Asura in order to make the world mold back into "motion". She also takes incredible pleasure in others' pain when she is the one causing it, and when her experiments are working. She is so sinister that she can even subject her own child, Crona, to unimaginably torturous punishments, like locking them in a dark room for many days without food or water whenever they fails to do what she commands them to do, and gives them terrifying orders such as to devour many human souls. She is easily angered by those who create a road block in her experiments or in the "evolution" of the world, and usually tries to eliminate these problems. Although she seems so dark, to say that Medusa has no love in her is a false statement. Deep within Medusa is her own, unique, sinister form of love that comes out extremely rarely. She expresses romantic love specifically towards her confirmed crush, Dr. Stein, whom she finds attractive because of his inner darkness. She also has a motherly love towards Crona, which only comes out after Crona has become a fearsome killer and spreader of Madness. Uniquely, in both cases, Medusa had openly stated that she loved the person right before the same person kills her. In anime however, Stein states that any love within Medusa's heart, no matter how small or big, was a hoax. He calls her out on this in his first battle with her, stating "At your core, Medusa, you're just like me. You could never understand a concept like love." Based on her evil and manipulative actions, this could very well be true. Considering how severe her nemesis Maka's hatred against her, she may also more vicious and savage than her manga counterpart does, if her traits in both anime or manga not equal. Despite this, Medusa is primarily proven to be the most evil individual in the series, even more than Asura. In the anime, Maka's Majin Hunt technique, a technique based on erasing all evil, is the only thing able to kill her for the reason that she is pure evil. In contrary, when Maka utilizes the kishin hunter (A more powerful variant) against Asura, it is unable to kill Asura because he is actually the embodiment of madness, which is not completely evil. History Eight centuries prior, after Arachne actions in creating the Magic Weapons marked her for death, Medusa severed all ties with her older sister and left her to die by Death's hand. Eventually, formulating a scheme to revive the Kishin Asura, Medusa injected her child, Crona, with the melted remains of Ragnarok mixed with Black Blood. From there, Medusa proceed to make her child's life miserable to condition Crona to be at an ideal level of madness compatible with Asura's. Soon after, with blessing of the Grand Witch, Medusa infiltrated the DWMA as the school nurse in order to get close to the Kishin. First Confrontations Eventually, after years of turning the child into a sociopath, Medusa takes Crona to Italy to devour souls before Maka Albarn detected the child's actions at the Santa Maria Novella Basilica after Medusa casts a spell to remove her child's inhibitions. Though watching the events of Crona overpowering Maka unfold from her broom miles above the ground, Medusa is eventually forced to intervene when Crona's resonance with Ragnarok was disabled by Franken Stein and Spirit and uses her Vector Arrows to hold the Meister and Weapon duo long enough to grab the heavily injured Crona and departs. However, the fact that Maka's partner Soul ended up with some of Crona's blood mixed into his system presents interest to Medusa as she plotted to free Prisoner #13 to test the Black Blood's effect on Soul and how it would effect Maka. But when confronted by Eruka Frog over her actions endangering their kind, Medusa forced the witch into her service and has her release Free in her stead. Having also drafted the five remaining Mizune sisters, after killing their oldest in secret for aiding Eruka, Medusa begins setting up her scheme to release Asura from his prison during a DWMA event. But as Stein has begun to caught on to her true nature and intent, Medusa quickly has Eruka destroy her house to remove any evidence of her being a witch while retrieving the vial of Black Blood prepared for Asura. The next day, Medusa sets her plan into motion by first trapping Death and all the academy students in one room. From there, with herself and Crona halting would be interlopers, Medusa has Eruka and Free use the Black Blood vial to free Asura from his prison. Finding herself facing Stein and Spirit, admiring the Meister for his creativity and attempted to draft him, Medusa had the upper hand at first until Stein embraced his madness with the fight turning in a stalemate with neither opponent with an advantage. However, gloating as she sensed Asura's revival, Medusa accidently dropped her defense and ends up armless with her torso sliced off. Despite biting Stein prior to him landing the deathblow and her love declaration for the Meister, Medusa survived by using Asura's residual madness to transfer her soul into one of her snake familiars while making it appear she destroyed herself. Eventually, after her vessel made it out of the DWMA, Medusa's soul acquires the body of a young girl by the name of Rachel Boyd. Deceitful Manipulation Eventually, with her new vessel, Medusa arrives to Baba Yaga's Castle where she confronts Arachne after eight centuries. The meeting almost ended in bloodshed were it not for Eruka, who infiltrated Arachnopobia under Medusa's orders. Soon after, Medusa reveals herself to Crona and convinces the child to serve as her spy in the DWMA. Once Eruka and Mizune obtain the legendary artifact "BREW", after Crona's mysterious disappearance from the institute, Medusa offers a ceasefire with the DWMA to deal with a mutual enemy: Arachnopobia. Teamed with Maka and Soul, who believed Crona is held captive by her older sister, Medusa takes them to Baba Yaga Castle's throne room where the three learn that Arachne had discarded her body and became a spiritual being of pure madness. Incapacitated, Medusa is forced to watch her sister's demise by Maka while noticing the Meister's level of power. Once Arachne's soul is eaten by Soul, Medusa discards Rachel and transfers herself into Arachne's souless body. In her new body, Medusa gloats that she had Crona the entire time and used the DWMA to obtain an ideal body. Before Medusa could kill Maka, recognizing the girl as too great a threat to leave alive, she finds herself confronted by the Death Scythe Tezca Tlipoca and partner Enrique. Due to residual aspects of Arachne attempting to regain control, Medusa takes Tezca's offer and flees as she begins preparing Crona for the destiny she envisioned for her child: becoming one with Asura and ushering in a new order of chaos. The Witch's Legacy Using the Black Blood, Medusa created the Black Clown to test its abilities compared to the ones Asura produces. Though it appeared to fall against Kirikou, Medusa is delighted to see that her creation survived as she later has the Black Clown augment Crona's powers during the child's fight with Black Star. At that time, Medusa finds herself facing the renegade Death Scythe Justin Law as he absorbed a Clown to execute her for her hubris. Using her personal Purple Clown to enhance her familiars, having Crona taken to safety, Medusa engages Justin in an epic battle until Tezca's arrival allows to her leave. Soon after, Medusa sends Crona to Ukraine to cause havoc and kill Tsar Pushka and his Meister Feodor as a experiment to test the improved Black Blood against the Anti-Demon Wavelength. Once Crona returns, Medusa acts more like a mother, to her child's confusion. Eventually, with her child realizing the inablity to deal with her love or anything else, Medusa finds herself being vivisected by Ragnarok under the command of a frightened and utterly furious Crona. Once Crona finished venting, seconds away from death, Medusa reveals that she intentionally provoked Crona so the child would severe ties with everything and everyone to carry out the destiny she created. With her aspirations fulfilled as Crona delivers the final blow, Medusa calmly says her mind-burning final words: "I love you, Crona". Anime In the anime adaptation, Medusa's story is the same leading up to the events of Baba Yaga's Castle, where she tricks Crona into helping her manipulate Stein by amplifying his madness due to Crona slipping a magic snake in Marie Mjolnir's tea earlier on. Facing Maka, Marie, and a repentant Crona, Medusa is defeated by Maka with Genie Hunter, returning Rachel to normal while Medusa is driven out and disintegrates due to the evil-destroying powers of the Genie Hunter attack. In her final words, she tells Maka that her Genie Hunter might not be strong enough to defeat Asura. This presumably kills her; although the snake whose body she transferred into after her first defeat is shown in the credits of the final episode, there is nothing to suggest that Medusa's soul was actually inside the snake this time, as Medusa said during her reunion with Arachne that she only survived this soul transfer because of the waves of madness from Asura awakening and likely wouldn't survive it again. Abilities *High Magical Power: Medusa is an extremely skilled witch. Combined with her intellect and power, she is one of the most powerful antagonists of the series. She is able to hold her own against a powerful Death Scythe like Justin Law & also against Stein while he was wielding Spirit. The size of her soul is the largest witch soul shown throughout the series, though she isn't up to her sister's caliber after becoming one with Madness nor the likes of Mabaa. Her magical theme is a snake and utilizes vector magic. After the possession of Arachne's body, Medusa's attacks develop traits within their appearance that are taken from her sister's theme of spiders. *Body Possession: By using her magical abilities, Medusa has the ability to survive death by concealing her soul within a snake. By entering someone's body, she can take complete control. *Cursing Expert: Medusa has the ability to curse others with magic that can accelerate Madness. She had used this on Stein via a snake which Crona implanted into Marie without her knowledge of it. *Snake Familiars: Medusa has thousands of snakes in her body ready to do her bidding without the need to drop her soul protection, which also allows her to avoid being discovered by others. *Genius-Level Intellect: Medusa is very intelligent and is considered a scientific genius in her own right. She had successfully figured out the DWMA's secret from her time as a nurse and invented the Black Blood, which can turn one into a Kishin via resonating with them from the insanity. She is arguably one of the smartest characters in the series. *Deception Expert: Medusa is very skilled in manipulating and deceiving others. She is capable of bending almost anyone to her will through methods varying from false kindness to blackmail and even torture. The best proof of her actor and manipulation skills is the fact that he managed to live unnoticed in DWMA, just under nose of Shinigami himself. *Intimidation: Despite her appearance, Due to her being a sinister and cunning individual, many characters who know of or met Medusa have noted of how evil she is. This is most apparent for Crona, as they are immensely afraid of her and other characters such as Free, an immortal, and Eureka doesn't dare step out of line. She often uses this to control her victims, who knows of her capabilities. Techniques/Powers *Vector Arrow: Attacks with a flurry of arrow like 'snakes' that can both cut and pierce the opponent acting somewhat as blades. It can also be thought of as her signature move. *Light Serpent: Medusa extends one of her snakes to strike from afar. *Snake Bomb: Places a snake from her body into someone else; it will only detonate when she gives the signal. *Soul Protect: is an advanced form of magic developed by Witches to neutralize their soul's wavelength, effectively camouflaging it and making it appear as if it were a normal human soul. *Steam Vector (known as Vector Storm in the anime): this attack surrounds Medusa with her Vector Arrows making a spinning, tornado like shield. *Compress: A variation of Steam Vector that uses Vectors from the attack to surround and crush an opponent. *Vector Plate: A technique that places an arrow upon the ground which launches whoever stands over it in the direction that it is pointing. *Analysis Disassemble: Using numerous Vector Arrows, Medusa is able to pull things, such as a magical coating, apart. *Vector Boost: A magic that doubles the power drawn in the direction of the arrow. *Vector Conduct: A spell technique used to allow someone to see hidden arrows that Medusa has placed to guide them. *Tail Snake: is a specific Vector Arrow that is located protruding out of Medusa's rear in the manner of a tail, as its name suggests. Can be used to stabilization or to attack. *Vector Blade: A sword created out of compressed Vector Arrows. (Anime only.) *Magic Calculation: is a spell used by Witches as a 'place maker' for placing the exact coordinates of an even more complex magical spell. *Madness research techniques *Madness Fusion: despite being attributed to this fusion, Medusa does not in fact partake in this ability, allowing the Purple-Dyed Clown to be absorbed into one of the many snakes. This process not only transmutes this single snake-like entity into a far more jagged and feral beast but in turn effects the rest of them as well, imbuing them with substantial boosts in both their attack power and speed. Trivia *The way Medusa repeatedly jumps from one body to another possessing them would be like how a snake would shed its skin. *As of Episode 45 in the anime; her soul is removed from Rachel Boyd's body by Maka's Majin Hunt, however, this never happened in the actual manga. *In the ending credits of the final episode of the anime, it showed Medusa's Army sitting on a hill chilling. However, there is a snake moving. That snake is still Medusa, stating that she's still alive. *Medusa's name is an reference to Greek mythology's, Medusa, who was one of three Gorgons, just as Medusa is one of the three Gorgon sisters in the series. She also happens to be the only one revealed so far to have the same name as one of the actual Gorgon sisters, as Arachne is named after a woman who turned into a spider by Athena in Greek Mythology. 'Medusa' is also the Italian and Russian word for 'jellyfish'. *Medusa's Vector theme appears to be based on Shotaro's "Bones of Medusa"'s ability to fire vectors/snakes like Medusa's vectors from Atsushi's earlier series B. Ichi. *In the "Atsushi Bar" postface of volume 4, it is revealed that Medusa's braid is curling to the right when she is as a witch and curling to the left when she is as a nurse. However, the first time she appears as a witch, her braid is mistakenly curling to the left. *In Episode 40 of the anime, it is seen that on her prison door, her name is misspelled as "Witch Medousa". *Medusa's Japanese voice actress Houko Kuwashima also voiced Lilithmon (Digimon Fusion) and Cirucci Sanderwicci (Bleach). *Medusa's English voice actress Luci Christian also voiced Wrath (Fullmetal Alchemist). *Medusa is strikingly similar in many aspects to Yuuki Terumi from the BlazBlue series: **Both use snake like powers. **Both wear hoods with snake markings. **They needed bodies to host at one point (Rachel/Hazama). **Considered the most evil beings in their respective universes. **Both are very powerful when it comes to close combat. **Both are known for acting like trolls in their series. **Both die through being forced out of their host bodies and being cut with a blade (Maka with Genie Hunter, Hakumen with Time Killer). **Their eyes glow with a certain color (Medusa Red, Terumi Green). **Both have deceived people until their cover is blown (Medusa as a nurse, Terumi as Hazama). **They have yellow eyes. **Both have controlled or corrupted people throughout their series (Crona, Tsubaki Yayoi). 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